How-To Discussion of Promoting and Marketing Novels and Written Works

[sullivan_riyria]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but is everyone here familiar with Ralan's Webstravaganza? It's essentially a site that lists many outlets (web and print mags, publishers, etc.) for selling stories, poems and art and includes pay rates, contacts and where to submit.

My question is this. Is it bad form to submit a story to more than one outlet? I guess it could be embarrassing or even downright bad for a burgeoning career if two people want to publish a story. One gets it and one is irritated and may blacklist you.

On the other hand, some publishers have such a long turn around and limited submission times, so only submitting to one at a time seems like making the mistake of throwing all of one's eggs into a single basket.

I'm in a quandary here. Any advice?

I've never written for the short fiction market - so don't know etiquette, but in general I suspect each publiation will want an exclusive for some period of time (1 year, 2 years). With the rate of rejections, it may be that you need to submit to several simultaneously...but if someone picks it up you should write to the others withdrawing it from submission so they don't waste their time. At least that is a the approach I would take if I were doing it - for what it's worth.

[AZimmer23]

Thanks, Sullivan.

[KatG]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but is everyone here familiar with Ralan's Webstravaganza? It's essentially a site that lists many outlets (web and print mags, publishers, etc.) for selling stories, poems and art and includes pay rates, contacts and where to submit.

My question is this. Is it bad form to submit a story to more than one outlet? I guess it could be embarrassing or even downright bad for a burgeoning career if two people want to publish a story. One gets it and one is irritated and may blacklist you.

On the other hand, some publishers have such a long turn around and limited submission times, so only submitting to one at a time seems like making the mistake of throwing all of one's eggs into a single basket.

I'm in a quandary here. Any advice?

Publishers don't keep blacklists. They don't have time. They don't care enough about you to do it. That doesn't mean, however, that you can't piss off an editor who then doesn't have much incentive to work with you.

The simultaneous submission issue is different depending on whether it's a short story or a novel. Short stories it's more usual, many magazines don't ask for an exclusive submission and magazines try to get back to submissions in a set time period of 1-2 months. For novels, simultaneous submissions are more problematic for publishers and they take longer to respond if they are accepting unagented material for a whole novel. But there are ways to manage exclusivity periods to keep them down to a couple of months. And there are some people who just do simultaneous submissions and they seldom get caught. With changes in formats and publishing schedules that are going on, procedures may change so it's best to find out what submission requirements a publisher is asking for.

[sullivan_riyria]

Similar to my post on resources for traditonal publishing (writing and sending query letters) this one focuses on marketing your book once you have a completed project. Some of these focus on self-publsihing, though the technique described can be used by any author. Everyone of these self-published author has sold thosands of books, and therefore you can trust what they are saying. I myself used similar techniques (but before reading these) so it shows that there are some formulas to emulate for success.

• Quit Your Day Job, A Guide for the Self Published Author $5.99 by H.P. Mallory
  
• How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! $2.99 by John Locke
  
• Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author $4.95 by Zoe Winters
  
• Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should $3.99 by David Gaughran
  
• We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media $4.99 by Kristen Lamb
  
• Write It Forward: From Writer to Successful Author $4.99 by Bob Mayer
  
• Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-publishing Success $2.99 by Carolyn McCray, Amber Scott &
  Rachel Thompson
  

[SteveW]

I just got this one from the last Randy Ingermanson news letter.

And it's free!


The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success by the CEO of Smashwords.

[Scorpion]

Similar to my post on resources for traditonal publishing (writing and sending query letters) this one focuses on marketing your book once you have a completed project. Some of these focus on self-publsihing, though the technique described can be used by any author. Everyone of these self-published author has sold thosands of books, and therefore you can trust what they are saying. I myself used similar techniques (but before reading these) so it shows that there are some formulas to emulate for success.

• Quit Your Day Job, A Guide for the Self Published Author $5.99 by H.P. Mallory
  
• How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! $2.99 by John Locke
  
• Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author $4.95 by Zoe Winters
  
• Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should $3.99 by David Gaughran
  
• We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media $4.99 by Kristen Lamb
  
• Write It Forward: From Writer to Successful Author $4.99 by Bob Mayer
  
• Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-publishing Success $2.99 by Carolyn McCray, Amber Scott &
  Rachel Thompson
  

While they all sound great ... I think I read somewhere the most self-published ebooks sold are self-publishing how-to books, which probably just means people are exploiting the new trend. And as you say you used similar techniques, I'm wondering if most of the information isn't just common sense... Perhaps I'm being overly sceptical.

[sullivan_riyria]

While they all sound great ... I think I read somewhere the most self-published ebooks sold are self-publishing how-to books, which probably just means people are exploiting the new trend. And as you say you used similar techniques, I'm wondering if most of the information isn't just common sense... Perhaps I'm being overly sceptical.

The ones I listed are all novelists who sold a ton of fiction(most more than 100,000 copies) so no it's not "these" books that made them famous - it is their fiction and why I mentioned these. To be honest I don't know of any "big selling" books on self-publishing by anyone who doesn't have a track record, so while I guess there could be titles that fit the bill you are discussing, I've not bumped into them, nor are any of these fitting that characterization.

Common sense? It depends...many things seem obvious once something points them out to you...but if you made a list before reaidng the books would you have come up with them on your own? Depends on the person.

[M. R. Mathias]

Old people don't follow arguments so good, I guess. Cause what I get from this writer's words is the idea that:
(1) presence on the internet constitutes advertising
(2) the more places you make yourself known, the more presence you have.
When someone types into a search engine this writer's name, the more hits the engine returns, the better chance someone will go see what all the fuss is about. If the search engine reports 6 billion hits, the evidence indicates that he has been in the ear of every person on the planet, then there must be something to this writer that makes him so popular.
So, the whole purpose of this discussion is to establish that presence and thus get another hit on a search engine.

Tell you what, writer person, get yourself a posting in Wikipedia. If I can find an article about your book in Wikipedia, I may go look at what you've written. Otherwise, nothing you've written about the book has drawn my interest thus far.
Oh, yeah, I rarely look past the first page of my search engine so the number of hits doesn't do anything for me but I'm old; young people may see it differently.

That's an interesting post. But considering that ANYONE can ad a book to Wiki that validation isn't so strong with me. I -as an author- may try and get hits, but I am after readers. I offer so much free content that getting hits is getting read. If a reader chooses to buy after that, I have done my job as an advertiser. Many do, many don't, but with 6 gazillion people on the planet, if you don't make a little noise you don't get heard.

[Steven L Jordan]

...but with 6 gazillion people on the planet, if you don't make a little noise you don't get heard.

I'm convinced even a good internet presence isn't enough. So much of promotion is word of mouth, and without it, great exposure can still be worthless.

[Starchaser3000]

I'm convinced even a good internet presence isn't enough. So much of promotion is word of mouth, and without it, great exposure can still be worthless.

I agree with this too. I think I have done more than enough blogging and blabbing about my book on the internet to the point that I don't want to come off as a self promoting whore. I have submitted my book to this years writers digest writing contest and I also have received some decent reviews for being an amateur author/novelist. So I do believe my work has some merit to it, but I accept that its not for everybody. So far I think I have done all that I can to promote my book without the help of an agent or a trad publishing house to back me up.

[sullivan_riyria]

I agree with this too. I think I have done more than enough blogging and blabbing about my book on the internet to the point that I don't want to come off as a self promoting whore. I have submitted my book to this years writers digest writing contest and I also have received some decent reviews for being an amateur author/novelist. So I do believe my work has some merit to it, but I accept that its not for everybody. So far I think I have done all that I can to promote my book without the help of an agent or a trad publishing house to back me up.

I think a lot of it has to do with 'approach' -The mere thought that you are worried about being a "promoting whore" says you might be thinking about it wrong.

There's a big difference between a "hard sell" or even a little "buy my book" and approaching it as, "hey here's something you might be interested in, check it out for yourself." Pointing someone to a sample chapter shows a much different mentality then pointing them to a buy button.

As to agents or trad publishing house "promoting your book" - the agent's tasks is to promote to publishers so there won't be any "external exposure there." The Traditional publishers are marketing toward corporate book buyers to get "distribution" so also not getting to the "end user" (i.e. reader). No matter how you publish it is going to be you, the writer, who builds the connections with the reader base.

[Steven L Jordan]

There's a big difference between a "hard sell" or even a little "buy my book" and approaching it as, "hey here's something you might be interested in, check it out for yourself." Pointing someone to a sample chapter shows a much different mentality then pointing them to a buy button.

In my experience, even that soft-sell "here's a link to a free sample," is still frowned-upon, and those who do it are still considered "whores." I've had such postings, and even mentioning my book in relation to another subject, deleted by mods. Most often, any book advertising or promotion is segregated to separate categories that most visitors simply avoid.

Just like so many other areas, consumers want to avoid advertisers, even when they are looking for a product; it makes it hard to sell anything, but especially online.

[Starchaser3000]

In my experience, even that soft-sell "here's a link to a free sample," is still frowned-upon, and those who do it are still considered "whores." I've had such postings, and even mentioning my book in relation to another subject, deleted by mods.

I have had this experience as well. That is why I still believe a self published author can only do so much before their work might catch on at a later time. Even if what they have written meets up with the criteria of what is commercially viable, there are still obstacles that would require some time and perseverance to overcome. Plus not being an internet marketing and promoting wizard doesn't help matters much either.

[sullivan_riyria]

In my experience, even that soft-sell "here's a link to a free sample," is still frowned-upon, and those who do it are still considered "whores." I've had such postings, and even mentioning my book in relation to another subject, deleted by mods. Most often, any book advertising or promotion is segregated to separate categories that most visitors simply avoid.

Just like so many other areas, consumers want to avoid advertisers, even when they are looking for a product; it makes it hard to sell anything, but especially online.

I think it depends on a number of factors:

• How active you are in the community
• How helpful have you been in helping others
• The exact wording of the post

If you just fly-in and fly-out, sure that's not much different but if you are active in the community and people already know that you are part of the group then it works - or at least it has for me. As with everything YMMV.

[Josh Lemay]

I didn't see mention of it, but I also didn't have the time to read the entirety of the thread, so I apologize if this has been discussed before.

I think a more interactive approach to marketing is both fun and more interesting to the general populace. Things like contests, or just talking, having fun, Facebook status stuff, etc. People generally enjoy things like this, and while it's a bit more time consuming than just tossing up your website somewhere, or giving out a free book, or whatever, I think it has better overall results.

Results are also probably a bit slower, but I'd say they are longer lasting, too.

As a random example, I'm fairly small time in terms of writing. I don't have a huge presence or anything, but I did decide to hold a contest on my website awhile back. I enjoy playing online games, so I decided I'd give away gift cards for the games I play and mention it on the forums for those games.

This was when I first started my website, so it was really really slow in the beginning. I had 80 and 86 total hits in the first two months. I started the contest at the end of the third month and still managed 554 views(around 300 in one day), and the fourth month skyrocketed at 1,277. After that my total views per month definitely rose, though it's not as high as when I held the contest. Still, I'm seeing about 3x more people per month checking out my site than I first had, so there's definitely something to that.

And it was fun! People enjoyed it. I gave away some decent prizes, though nothing super expensive. No one minded me posting on the forums for those games because I was a player, plus I was offering prizes related to the games in question.

I don't think this is the end-all-be-all promotional/marketing tool, but for me it was a lot of fun and I think everyone who joined in the contest had fun, too.